Saturday, March 22, 2014

Blessing the Bombs

Because of Tinian's role in the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, you will always find it mentioned in intriguing ways. Tinian is invoked in peace studies and anti-nuclear activist rhetoric in the same way Guam is mentioned in military strategic analysis and history. Both are empty sites from which violence is projected and structures of power are maintained. Rarely however do either of these sites achieve their own purpose in these mentions, instead they just serve to enhance the potency of other places and other projects. This is one of the reasons I wrote my dissertation, to try to give some shape and form to this dynamic, through which you can mention places like Guam and Tinian a million times, but never say anything about them.

Below is a quote from the late Father Zabelka, a chaplain in the US Air Force and blessed both the pilots and the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I came across this quote from him in Howard Zinn's book "The Bomb." I've included below it, an interview in which he expounds on this.

"The destruction of civilians in war was always forbidden by the Church, and if a soldier came to me and asked if her could put a bullet through a child's head, I would have told him absolutely not.

But in 1945 Tinian Island was the largest airfield in the world. Three planes a minute would take off from it around the clock. Many of these planes went to Japan with the express purpose of killing not one child or one civilian but slaughtering hundreds and thousands of children - and I said noting...I never preached a single sermon against killing civilians to men who were doing it. Because I was brainwashed. It never entered my mind to publicly protest...I was told it was necessary, told openly by the military and told implicitly by my Church's leadership.

To the best of my knowledge, no American cardinals or bishops were opposing these mass air raids...God was on the side of my country. The Japanese were the enemy."

*********************

Interview

Father George Zabelka, a Catholic chaplain with the U.S. Air
Force, served as a priest for the airmen who dropped the atomic bombs on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, and gave them his blessing. Days
later he counseled an airman who had flown a low-level reconnaissance
flight over the city of Nagasaki shortly after the detonation of “Fat
Man.” The man described how thousands of scorched, twisted bodies
writhed on the ground in the final throes of death, while those still on
their feet wandered aimlessly in shock—flesh seared, melted, and
falling off. The crewman’s description raised a stifled cry from the
depths of Zabelka’s soul: “My God, what have we done?” Over the next
twenty years, he gradually came to believe that he had been terribly
wrong, that he had denied the very foundations of his faith by lending
moral and religious support to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Zabelka died in 1992, but his message, in this speech given on the 40th
anniversary of the bombings, must never be forgotten.

The destruction of civilians in war was always
forbidden by the church, and if a soldier came to me and asked if he
could put a bullet through a child’s head, I would have told him,
absolutely not. That would be mortally sinful. But in 1945 Tinian
Island was the largest airfield in the world. Three planes a minute
could take off from it around the clock. Many of these planes went to
Japan with the express purpose of killing not one child or one civilian
but of slaughtering hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of
children and civilians—and I said nothing.

I never preached a single sermon against killing civilians to
the men who were doing it. I was brainwashed! It never entered my mind
to protest publicly the consequences of these massive air raids. I was
told it was necessary—told openly by the military and told implicitly by
my church’s leadership. (To the best of my knowledge no American
cardinals or bishops were opposing these mass air raids. Silence in
such matters is a stamp of approval.)

I worked with Martin Luther King, Jr. during
the Civil Rights struggle in Flint, Michigan. His example and his words
of nonviolent action, choosing love instead of hate, truth instead of
lies, and nonviolence instead of violence stirred me deeply. This
brought me face to face with pacifism—active nonviolent resistance to
evil. I recall his words after he was jailed in Montgomery, and this
blew my mind. He said, “Blood may flow in the streets of Montgomery
before we gain our freedom, but it must be our blood that flows, and
not that of the white man. We must not harm a single hair on the head
of our white brothers.”

I struggled. I argued. But yes, there it was in the Sermon on
the Mount, very clear: “Love your enemies. Return good for evil.” I
went through a crisis of faith. Either accept what Christ said, as
unpassable and silly as it may seem, or deny him completely.

For the last 1700 years the church has not only been making war
respectable: it has been inducing people to believe it is an honorable
profession, an honorable Christian profession. This is not true. We
have been brainwashed. This is a lie.

War is now, always has been, and always will be
bad, bad news. I was there. I saw real war. Those who have seen real
war will bear me out. I assure you, it is not of Christ. It is not
Christ’s way. There is no way to conduct real war in conformity with
the teachings of Jesus. There is no way to train people for real war in
conformity with the teachings of Jesus.

The morality of the balance of terrorism is a morality that
Christ never taught. The ethics of mass butchery cannot be found in the
teachings of Jesus. In Just War ethics, Jesus Christ, who is supposed
to be all in the Christian life, is irrelevant. He might as well never
have existed. In Just War ethics, no appeal is made to him or his
teaching, because no appeal can be made to him or his teaching, for
neither he nor his teaching gives standards for Christians to follow in
order to determine what level of slaughter is acceptable.

So the world is watching today. Ethical
hairsplitting over the morality of various types of instruments and
structures of mass slaughter is not what the world needs from the
church, although it is what the world has come to expect from the
followers of Christ. What the world needs is a grouping of Christians
that will stand up and pay up with Jesus Christ. What the world needs
is Christians who, in language that the simplest soul could understand,
will proclaim: the follower of Christ cannot participate in mass
slaughter. He or she must love as Christ loved, live as Christ lived
and, if necessary, die as Christ died, loving ones enemies.

For the 300 years immediately following Jesus’ resurrection,
the church universally saw Christ and his teaching as nonviolent.
Remember that the church taught this ethic in the face of at least three
serious attempts by the state to liquidate her. It was subject to
horrendous and ongoing torture and death. If ever there was an occasion
for justified retaliation and defensive slaughter, whether in form of a
just war or a just revolution, this was it. The economic and political
elite of the Roman state and their military had turned the citizens of
the state against Christians and were embarked on a murderous public
policy of exterminating the Christian community.

Yet the church, in the face of the heinous crimes committed
against her members, insisted without reservation that when Christ
disarmed Peter he disarmed all Christians. Christians continued to
believe that Christ was, to use the words of an ancient liturgy, their
fortress, their refuge, and their strength, and that if Christ was all
they needed for security and defense, then Christ was all they should
have. Indeed, this was a new security ethic.

Christians understood that if they would only follow Christ and
his teaching, they couldn’t fail. When opportunities were given for
Christians to appease the state by joining the fighting Roman army,
these opportunities were rejected, because the early church saw a
complete and an obvious incompatibility between loving as Christ loved
and killing. It was Christ, not Mars, who gave security and peace.
Today the world is on the brink of ruin because the church
refuses to be the church, because we Christians have been deceiving
ourselves and the non-Christian world about the truth of Christ. There
is no way to follow Christ, to love as Christ loved, and simultaneously
to kill other people. It is a lie to say that the spirit that moves
the trigger of a flamethrower is the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ. It is
a lie to say that learning to kill is learning to be Christ-like. It
is a lie to say that learning to drive a bayonet into the heart of
another is motivated from having put on the mind of Christ. Militarized
Christianity is a lie. It is radically out of conformity with the
teaching, life, and spirit of Jesus.

Now, brothers and sisters, on the anniversary
of this terrible atrocity carried out by Christians, I must be the
first to say that I made a terrible mistake. I was had by the father of
lies. I participated in the big ecumenical lie of the Catholic,
Protestant, and Orthodox churches. I wore the uniform. I was part of
the system. When I said Mass over there I put on those beautiful
vestments over my uniform. (When Father Dave Becker left the Trident
submarine base in 1982 and resigned as Catholic chaplain there, he
said, “Every time I went to Mass in my uniform and put the vestments on
over my uniform, I couldn’t help but think of the words of Christ
applying to me: Beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing.”)

As an Air Force chaplain I painted a machine gun in the loving
hands of the nonviolent Jesus, and then handed this perverse picture to
the world as truth. I sang “Praise the Lord” and passed the
ammunition. As Catholic chaplain for the 509th Composite Group, I was
the final channel that communicated this fraudulent image of Christ to
the crews of the Enola Gay and the Boxcar.
All I can say today is that I was wrong. Christ would not be
the instrument to unleash such horror on his people. Therefore no
follower of Christ can legitimately unleash the horror of war on God’s
people. Excuses and self-justifying explanations are without merit. All
I can say is: I was wrong! But, if this is all I can say, this I must
do, feeble as it is. For to do otherwise would be to bypass the first
and absolutely essential step in the process of repentance and
reconciliation: admission of error, admission of guilt.

I was there, and I was wrong. Yes, war is hell,
and Christ did not come to justify the creation of hell on earth by
his disciples. The justification of war may be compatible with some
religions and philosophies, but it is not compatible with the
nonviolent teaching of Jesus. I was wrong. And to those of whatever
nationality or religion who have been hurt because I fell under the
influence of the father of lies, I say with my whole heart and soul I
am sorry. I beg forgiveness.

I asked forgiveness from the Hibakushas (the Japanese survivors
of the atomic bombings) in Japan last year, in a pilgrimage that I
made with a group from Tokyo to Hiroshima. I fell on my face there at
the peace shrine after offering flowers, and I prayed for
forgiveness—for myself, for my country, for my church. Both Nagasaki
and Hiroshima. This year in Toronto, I again asked forgiveness from the
Hibakushas present. I asked forgiveness, and they asked forgiveness
for Pearl Harbor and some of the horrible deeds of the Japanese
military, and there were some, and I knew of them. We embraced. We
cried. Tears flowed. That is the first step of reconciliation—admission
of guilt and forgiveness. Pray to God that others will find this way
to peace.

All religions have taught brotherhood. All people want peace.
It is only the governments and war departments that promote war and
slaughter. So today again I call upon people to make their voices heard.
We can no longer just leave this to our leaders, both political and
religious. They will move when we make them move. They represent us.
Let us tell them that they must think and act for the safety and
security of all the people in our world, not just for the safety and
security of one country. All countries are inter-dependent. We all need
one another. It is no longer possible for individual countries to
think only of themselves. We can all live together as brothers and
sisters or we are doomed to die together as fools in a world holocaust.

Each one of us becomes responsible for the
crime of war by cooperating in its preparation and in its execution.
This includes the military. This includes the making of weapons. And it
includes paying for the weapons. There’s no question about that. We’ve
got to realize we all become responsible. Silence, doing nothing, can
be one of the greatest sins.

The bombing of Nagasaki means even more to me than the bombing
of Hiroshima. By August 9, 1945, we knew what that bomb would do, but
we still dropped it. We knew that agonies and sufferings would ensue,
and we also knew—at least our leaders knew—that it was not necessary.
The Japanese were already defeated. They were already suing for peace.
But we insisted on unconditional surrender, and this is even against
the Just War theory. Once the enemy is defeated, once the enemy is not
able to hurt you, you must make peace.

As a Catholic chaplain I watched as the Boxcar, piloted by a
good Irish Catholic pilot, dropped the bomb on Urakami Cathedral in
Nagasaki, the center of Catholicism in Japan. I knew that St. Francis
Xavier, centuries before, had brought the Catholic faith to Japan. I
knew that schools, churches, and religious orders were annihilated. And
yet I said nothing.

Thank God that I’m able to stand here today and
speak out against war, all war. The prophets of the Old Testament
spoke out against all false gods of gold, silver, and metal. Today we
are worshipping the gods of metal, the bomb. We are putting our trust
in physical power, militarism, and nationalism. The bomb, not God, is
our security and our strength. The prophets of the Old Testament said
simply: Do not put your trust in chariots and weapons, but put your
trust in God. Their message was simple, and so is mine.

We must all become prophets. I really mean that. We must all do
something for peace. We must stop this insanity of worshipping the
gods of metal. We must take a stand against evil and idolatry. This is
our destiny at the most critical time of human history. But it’s also
the greatest opportunity ever offered to any group of people in the
history of our world—to save our world from complete annihilation.

This article is excerpted from a speech George Zabelka gave
at a Pax Christi conference in August 1985 (tape of speech obtained
from Notre Dame University Archives). The first two paragraphs are from
an interview with Zabelka published in Sojourners magazine, August
1980.

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This blog is dedicated to Chamorro issues, the use and revitalization of the Chamoru language and the decolonization of Guam. This blog also aims to inform people around the world about the history, culture and language and struggles of the Chamorro people, who are the indigenous islanders of Guam, Saipan, Tinian, Luta and Pagan in the Mariana Islands. Pues Haggannaihon ha', ya taitai na'ya, ya Si Yu'us Ma'ase para i finatto-mu.

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The Revolution Will Not Be Haolified

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE HAOLIFIEDTinige’ as Guahu - 2003 (updated 2008)

You will not be able to ignore it che’lu * This time you will not be able to blame it all on Anghet * You will not be able to change channels * And watch Fear Factor, Rev TV of Salamat Po Guam because * The Revolution will not be televised

The revolution will not be televised, nor will it be advertised * It will not be sponsored by the Good Guys at Moylan’s or the better guys at AK. * It will not be something easily explained by radio callers * Whether they be Positively Local, Definitively Settler, or Surprisingly Coconut * It will not be cornered by the Calvos and explained by Sabrina Salas * Matanane * After the story about the incoming B-52’s or 1000’s of Marines careening towards to Guam, and how we * should be economically energized and not terrorized. * Jon Anderson will have no TT anecdotes about it * and Chris Barnett won’t malafunkshun it because the revolution will not be televised

The revolution will not be televised or editorialized * It will not be something canabilized with two inches here two inches there * Dubious headlines everywhere * Lee Weber will not edit it * Joe Murphy will not put it in his pipe and smoke it * Nor dream about it, or tell others the wonders and blunders of it. * There will be no letters to the editor quoting scriptures or denying its constitutionality * And there will be no American flag inserts saying these three colors just don’t run * As the revolution will not be editorialized

The revolution will not be televised or politicized * It will not play the same old gayu games * And promise you that same old talonan things. * The revolution will not wave at you as you drive by on Marine Drive * And seduce you with its hardworking eyes. * It will not be territorial or popular, and not encourage you with maolek blue. * The revolution will not put marang salaman po after its speeches to get more Filipino votes in the next election because the revolution will not be politicized

The revolution will not be televised, not be theorized * It will not be something GCC or UOG friendly. * There will be no books at Bestseller offering to help you lose something in 90 days * Or Rachel Ray helping you cook the revolution of your way. * Ron McNinch will not survey it * and will not poll people about their revolution of choice. * There will be no WASC review report demanding accountability demanding autonomy * And no beachcombing carpetbaggers will proclaim their own terminal authority * Over the histories, the laws, the thinking of those for whom they see nothing but corrupt and corrupting inferiority * The revolution will not be colonized

The revolution will not be televised, not be supersized. * The revolution will not be something you can buy at Ross, or get at blue light cost * It is not just red rice, kelaguan uhang, or popcorn with Tobacco sauce. * It doesn’t come with Coke and it doesn’t fit on a fiesta plate. * The revolution will not make you gof sinexy, cure your jafjaf, or make fragrant your fa’fa’ * The revolution will not force you to be where America’s empire begins * Or where Japan’s golf courses and Gerry Yingling’s credit card debt ends. * You won’t need a credit card, or be charged for the tin foil to cover your balutan * As the revolution will not be economized

The revolution will not be televised, blownback or militarized * There will be no more physical ordnance buried in people’s lands * And no more patrionizing propaganda buried in people’s minds * The revolution will not get you cheaper cases of chicken or increased commissary privileges. * It will not make freedomless flags feel more comfortable in your hands * Or make uniforms fit more snugly around your mind. * The revolution will not deny racism or exploitation * And not create histories about landfalls of destiny * But instead publicize the racism and evils of American hegemony. * The revolution will not be subsidized by construction contracts or the race of Senator Inouye or Congressman Burton * It will not be laid waste to by daisy cut budgets or Medicare spending limits * Instead it will be sustained by deep memories that refuse to die * The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be televised and will not polarize based on blood or color * It will not make your skin lighter * It will not make your skin darker * It will not test your blood the way Hitler or Uncle Sam would of done * It will not hate some and love others based on their time of naturalization * Or incept date of their compacts of free association. * But the revolution will help some find comfort, find strength, find power * In their connections to the land and to each other * Allow some to discover the sovereignty that can be found in solidarity * The revolution will take and remake this consciousness that doesn’t need to be televised * But does need to be revolutionized * The revolution will not be haolified * The revolution will not be haolified